I Take You. Nikki Gemmell

of her cowardice, her compliance; they all take her to be the good wife. Look after him, of course, but what about herself? Who’ll look after her? She’s a girl, she’ll be fine, she can look after herself.

      ‘Where do we go from here?’ Connie suddenly asks into the morning quiet.

      Cliff puts down the paper. Wheels his chair close. Props her leg back sternly, then the other one, and brushes a touch, admiring his handiwork; his wife’s knuckles are white on the chair’s rim. He does not know this. He tells her he has a new client. His voice, signalling the start of the process. A young South American, from Argentina; not a talker, a possibility, there’s something cheeky and ready in him, her ‘type’. A pause. There’s a scenario … he’d like to try out. He toys with his new bauble buried between his wife’s legs. Her eyes are closed, giving nothing away. Cliff talks on. A business meeting here, at home. Not now, but when she’s healed, readied. He will ring for papers. His wife will volunteer to help, she is close, she knows where they are. She will enter his office, bundle in hand, wearing the shortest of her Chanel skirts, that red one, with the fringe, and her six-inch Louboutins. Then just as she hands them across the desk the papers will be dropped, the whole lot. She will bend, on all fours, and pick them up. Slowly. Searching. Her rump high and square to this stranger.

      His test.

      Which Cliff will watch.

      ‘No knickers.’ Connie nods, feeling the wave of complicity, the stirring, washing through her despite herself.

      ‘Of course. And most importantly – my lovely, lovely new trinket.’ He strokes it with his thumb.